The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 953 - Democrats： Don't Let Nuclear War Distract From Old Hate Crimes

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00:00:14.640 As Vladimir Putin threatens to detonate nuclear weapons and plunge the planet into World War III,

00:00:21.180 Democrats in Congress are focusing on the truly pressing issues like outlawing lynchings,

00:00:26.880 which are already illegal, always have been, and have not been a major problem for at least

00:00:32.760 70 years. You see, for much of the 19th and early 20th centuries, lynchings were a serious problem

00:00:39.160 in the United States, targeting mostly black people, but other races as well, notably Italians,

00:00:45.040 who were the victims of the largest mass lynching in American history. During the 58 years that made

00:00:51.180 up the height of lynching in America, an estimated 4,467 Americans were killed by lynch mobs,

00:00:59.800 according to one academic study. For perspective, that is for fewer people over a 58-year period

00:01:06.760 than were murdered in just a dozen American cities just last year. But Democrats haven't passed any

00:01:13.020 laws to stop the historic killing going on right now, probably because they themselves unleashed

00:01:19.180 the crime wave during the BLM and Antifa riots of 2020. At the same time that the House voted to

00:01:26.000 make lynching illegal, again, to make it super duper illegal, Senate Democrats voted to enshrine a

00:01:33.680 sacred national right to lynch babies in the womb. Fortunately, the Senate Democrats failed by about 14

00:01:41.780 votes. Babies in pro-life states are safe for now. But then again, it's hard to say that any of us

00:01:48.960 are safe when an autocrat in Russia is threatening to unleash nuclear holocaust on the world if he is 1.00

00:01:54.740 not allowed to proceed with his invasion of a sovereign nation, an invasion that our own idiot 1.00

00:01:59.340 leaders invited him to undertake, while those same idiot leaders focus their firepower on non-existent 1.00

00:02:06.600 problems and American babies. What a time to be alive. For now, I'm Michael Knowles. It's The Michael 1.00

00:02:13.740 Knowles Show. Welcome back to the show. My favorite comment yesterday is from Steve Robson, who says,

00:02:26.900 in response to Michael's comment about how this is the first major war in his lifetime between

00:02:31.840 civilized nations, Joy Behar has now rescheduled her vacation from Rome to Fallujah. That's true.

00:02:39.360 Who wants to go to Venice when you could go to a civilized city like Aleppo, right? Because they're 1.00

00:02:46.040 all so civilized. There's no difference whatsoever between this war. So insist the liberals. It's

00:02:52.000 insane. You know where I want to stay, though? Right here in America, where we've got grade A,

00:02:57.260 number one, the best beef in the world, American beef brought to you by good ranchers. A lot of the

00:03:04.140 meat that you buy in the supermarket is just crap, and it's mislabeled, and they say it's product of the 0.98

00:03:08.760 USA, and it's really imported from some cheap ranch overseas, and then the cartels here just 0.98

00:03:13.520 minimally process it, and they say product of USA. Don't get that. Good ranchers goes to actual

00:03:19.320 American ranches, gets really high quality beef and chicken, by the way. They got great steaks.

00:03:25.040 They got great hamburgers. They bring them to you. The prices cannot be beat. The packaging is perfect

00:03:30.340 because they package it in individual helpings. So something like 40% of the meat in the United States

00:03:36.800 just gets thrown out, doesn't end up being eaten because you buy the big pack of it,

00:03:40.820 and then you only eat some of it, and the leftovers, and you throw it out. You're not

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00:04:26.060 Before we get into all the actual pressing problems that matter right now and not a problem

00:04:30.000 from 70 years ago, I am always surprised when I look up the history of lynchings in America

00:04:36.700 at how few lynchings there were. Lynchings, very bad. We're all anti-lynching. Don't.

00:04:44.380 Lynching, very bad. But the way that people talk about lynchings, you would think there were millions

00:04:49.520 of lynchings in America. You would think that there were at least hundreds of thousands, but there

00:04:54.780 weren't. There were relatively very few. What was it? 4,400 some lynchings? And actually, if you look

00:05:04.080 into the history of lynchings, the death penalty was really brought to the fore in America and promoted

00:05:13.600 as an antidote to the lynchings because there were all these extrajudicial killings that was very,

00:05:19.880 very bad. And so politicians who were trying to stop this and reform the system actually promoted

00:05:25.420 the death penalty as a way to discourage lynch mobs. Now, there's a kind of irony here that the

00:05:32.780 House voted to pass this anti-lynching bill to make lynching illegal again. They were going to make it

00:05:37.120 a federal hate crime and they will do that as opposed to a love crime. Those love crimes are bad,

00:05:43.780 but the hate crimes, they're a lot worse. But the maximum sentence for someone convicted of committing

00:05:50.640 a lynching under this legislation is 30 years. To me, the crazy takeaway here is that Democrats only

00:05:58.080 believe that you should be punished for 30 years if you lynch someone. Call me old-fashioned. Call me a

00:06:03.220 little fire and brimstone. I think the punishment should be much higher. I think if you lynch somebody,

00:06:08.520 probably you should just get killed by the state, right? But the Democrats have tied themselves 0.99

00:06:12.980 into Nazi or because the Democrats are anti-death penalty. So they can't, they can't push for the

00:06:17.500 death penalty even for as a punishment for something like lynching. So they say, okay, we're, we're taking

00:06:21.560 lynching so seriously. We're going to give you a relatively brief prison sentence for it, for a

00:06:27.240 crime that's already illegal, that hasn't been an issue in 70 years. Not a great use of resources,

00:06:32.280 not a, not a very logical, prudent sort of government, is it? No, not at all. But then again,

00:06:38.560 elections have consequences. We get the, what was it? H.L. Mencken said that democracy is the theory

00:06:45.300 that the people deserve, deserve to get what they want and they deserve to get it good and hard.

00:06:50.160 So Kamala Harris yesterday, she summed it up very well when she explained what elections mean. 0.99

00:06:55.440 As we all know, elections matter. And when folks vote, they order what they want. And in this case,

00:07:04.120 they got what they asked for. I went off script a little bit.

00:07:13.120 She is so singularly unlikable. I have basically nothing else to add to that clip other than that. 0.88

00:07:23.220 She's just so painfully unlikable. Joe Biden's approval rating is about negative 15% right now.

00:07:31.640 And hers is lower. If, if Democrats really believe that Kamala Harris is their great hope in 2024,

00:07:37.640 I think they ought to pack it in now and Republicans should start measuring the drapes.

00:07:43.020 Elections have an order. And I went off script. I know you did, darling. I know you went off script.

00:07:50.660 Now, President Trump has a different take on the election and a different take on Ukraine.

00:07:55.720 Right. President Trump, as the shelling, as the killing, as the horrible atrocities in Ukraine

00:08:01.200 continue, he says, quote, we are praying for the people of Ukraine. God bless them all. They are

00:08:06.540 indeed brave. As everyone understands, this horrific event would not have happened if there wasn't a

00:08:11.920 rigged election and I was president. Show me the lie. Show me the lie. You don't even need to believe

00:08:19.660 that the election was stolen, right? In the sense of people were carrying boxes of ballots overnight and

00:08:27.940 you had nefarious poll workers changing the numbers. Not saying that didn't happen, but it

00:08:32.180 didn't, it didn't need to happen for the election to have been rigged. You might debate whether or not

00:08:39.660 the election was stolen. You really can't debate whether or not the election was rigged. The Democrats

00:08:44.660 changed all the rules in the weeks and months before the election to be more favorable to

00:08:49.260 Democrats. They took away most of the ballot security measures that even Democrats, even Barack Obama in

00:08:55.260 recent years has, has talked about the importance of. They took that away because they were controlling

00:08:59.660 the elections and they felt that they could give themselves an advantage. And they did that.

00:09:03.440 They turned election day into election month, weeks and months. They turned the, the necessity to show

00:09:09.780 up to vote into widespread unsolicited mail-in ballots. That's what you saw in Pennsylvania.

00:09:15.860 This was in violation of the state constitution as a court just found, by the way, you saw all sorts

00:09:21.620 of madness. The counting that went on and on and on. There was obviously a rigging. And I think Trump

00:09:28.380 is right. Not, not just about the rigging of the election. That was obvious, whether it was stolen or

00:09:33.200 not, obviously it was rigged, but he's right about Ukraine too. I do not believe Putin would have

00:09:38.440 invaded Ukraine any more than he already had under Barack Obama. And then he just sort of stayed

00:09:43.060 there in Crimea. I don't think he would have invaded Ukraine under Trump. My evidence is that

00:09:47.100 he didn't. He invaded Georgia under Bush. He invaded Crimea under Biden. He didn't do nothing under

00:09:54.400 Trump. And then the minute Biden gets into office or I'm sorry, he, yeah, the first one is Bush.

00:10:00.380 Second one is Obama. It's easy to confuse Obama and Biden. Didn't do nothing under Trump. And then

00:10:04.060 under Joe Biden, what does he do? He full on invades the country and he doesn't seem like he's

00:10:09.120 going to be pulling out anytime soon. We talked yesterday about all of the propaganda that you're

00:10:15.280 seeing in this war. You're seeing a ton of Russian propaganda. You're seeing a ton of Western

00:10:18.620 propaganda too. Ukraine is not merely a battle between the Ukrainians fighting for their nation

00:10:24.280 and Russia fighting for its greater empire, but it's also a proxy battle in a sort of new cold war

00:10:30.500 between the West led by America and NATO and the European union and, and Russia. New cold war,

00:10:37.820 same as the old cold war. And, and Ukraine is that battleground. Okay. And so you're seeing a lot

00:10:41.980 of Western propaganda about how well the Ukrainians are doing. The ghost of Kiev is shooting down half a

00:10:48.260 dozen Russian fighter pilots and the, the, you know, men of snake Island who were all killed,

00:10:55.380 but they did so gloriously. And, you know, Zelensky is there on the front lines wearing

00:11:00.020 his fatigues. And, and none of that is exactly true. That's wartime propaganda like you see in

00:11:04.240 every war, but it's giving up the false impression to the West, uh, which is that Ukraine is winning

00:11:10.820 this war. Ukraine is not winning this war. Ukraine is fighting valiantly. There's no question about

00:11:15.480 that. Russia is the aggressor party here. There's no question about that. But I think a lot of 0.99

00:11:21.920 Western liberals in particular are laboring under the misapprehension that Ukraine is going to pull

00:11:27.040 it out. They're really close to winning. They're not. Russia has so much more power. They've got 0.65

00:11:33.120 all the advantage. They've got all of the leverage. If you were, you don't want to gamble on the future.

00:11:37.640 You kind of hope that the valiant, you know, Western looking Ukrainians can pull it out, but 1.00

00:11:42.140 people are in for a big surprise if they think that Putin is being routed. He's not, he's still

00:11:46.960 winning the war. And so then the question is this, the longer this drags on, the more frustrated Putin

00:11:54.340 gets that this isn't going fast enough. What is he willing to do? The man has threatened to use

00:12:02.140 nuclear weapons about as bluntly as a world leader can. Marco Rubio, who's on the Senate Intelligence

00:12:09.640 Committee, is the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. He said, there's something

00:12:12.920 seriously wrong with Putin. This is not the same man we've been dealing with 10 years ago. So then

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00:13:29.220 K-N-O-W-L-E-S. Are we going to die? Not even because of some military operation in Eastern Europe,

00:13:39.880 but because Russia drags the United States or the European Union, NATO, sort of tomato-tomato,

00:13:48.460 into a war. It becomes a world war. There's the use of nuclear weapons. How dangerous is this

00:13:53.800 situation? Well, Rubio from the Senate Intelligence Committee says, quote, I wish I could share more,

00:14:01.380 but for now, I think it's pretty obvious to many that something is off with Putin. He has always

00:14:06.920 been a killer, but his problem now is different and significant. It would be a mistake to assume 0.91

00:14:10.560 this Putin would react the same way he would have five years ago. So there are a few options on how to

00:14:16.960 interpret what Rubio is saying. Rubio is privy to intelligence that we are not privy to,

00:14:21.740 but also we know that politicians lie and exaggerate things, and we know that the intelligence

00:14:27.820 community lies and exaggerates things. So one possibility, Putin has a serious illness. There

00:14:33.060 have been rumors of this over the years. They haven't seemed to be true. The other is that Putin's

00:14:37.340 lost his marbles. He's got some psychological condition that means he's not a rational actor.

00:14:42.580 The third possibility is this is Western propaganda, and we're trying to undermine Putin and make him seem 0.73

00:14:47.780 like a crazy guy and encourage the world to all go to war with him and change the regime in Moscow.

00:14:55.740 None of those situations should make us feel particularly secure, especially when you've got

00:15:01.160 a former superpower, one of the two superpowers for most of the 20th century, and then they got

00:15:08.180 vanquished in the Cold War, and now they're coming back. Nuclear power, very butthurt about losing their

00:15:15.000 empire in the early 1990s, want to get it back. You've now got them in Kiev, mired in fighting,

00:15:22.880 trying to reclaim their empire. That's a very dangerous situation, especially because Ukraine 0.94

00:15:29.200 isn't giving up. Got to hand them credit. They are fighting much more valiantly, I think, than a lot of

00:15:34.940 people expected of a small nation with a corrupt oligarchic government against its former imperial

00:15:41.140 overlords. So now, the way that Ukraine is trying to turn the tide of this war is they're trying to

00:15:47.000 join the European Union. The president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, has said, quote,

00:15:53.080 we ask the European Union for Ukraine's immediate accession via a new special procedure. Our goal is to

00:16:00.040 be together with all Europeans, and most importantly, to be on an equal footing. I'm sure it's fair. I'm sure

00:16:06.280 it's possible. So at the height of this potentially global conflict, what Ukraine is saying is that

00:16:15.720 Europe, if you annex us, if you take us in to your federation, then the country will be able to 0.54

00:16:24.160 survive. Now, the cost of Ukraine surviving as an independent country or semi-independent country

00:16:29.740 is that the world is going to be plunged into a war. Russia will not stand for Ukraine joining the 0.98

00:16:35.160 European Union. So what does the EU say in response to this? The president of the EU, Ursula von der Leyen,

00:16:40.420 says maybe, basically. Her answer is, we want Ukraine to join, but dot, dot, dot. She says,

00:16:49.980 we have a process with Ukraine that is, for example, integrating the Ukrainian market into a single

00:16:54.640 market, so you want closer economic ties. We have very close cooperation on the energy grid, for example.

00:16:59.300 There are many topics we work very closely together, and indeed, over time, they belong to us.

00:17:06.880 They are one of us, and we want them in.

00:17:13.620 Those are fighting words. Those are not words to de-escalate the situation right now in Ukraine,

00:17:20.100 even Switzerland. Switzerland is the most famously, you might say infamously, neutral country in the

00:17:27.560 world. That's why all the sketchy banking rules are there, and people put their money there.

00:17:32.380 Even in the hottest wars, they remain neutral. That is how Switzerland has survived. Even Switzerland

00:17:38.300 is throwing its neutrality to the wind and coming out against Russia. They're not admitting that they're

00:17:44.420 doing that, but they are doing that. They're joining onto sanctions against Russia. Switzerland,

00:17:51.180 we think of Switzerland as maybe the most quintessentially European country that there

00:17:57.000 is, but Switzerland is not in the European Union. Switzerland is not in NATO. Switzerland is a neutral

00:18:05.880 country, and yet they're signing onto these sanctions against Russia. It got me thinking here, what do we

00:18:14.680 want? We in the West, we want everybody to be in the West, right? That's what all of the wars of 0.76

00:18:21.920 the 2000s were about. All of the Bush wars were, okay, these, well, one, it was because Middle Eastern 0.79

00:18:28.380 terrorists launched a war on us, and then that war was used, right? The attacks on September 11th

00:18:34.500 were used as the justification for saying, okay, we can't just let these people live and let live,

00:18:40.920 do whatever they want, because they're going to come to our shores too. So we're going to remake the 1.00

00:18:44.160 whole world in the vein of Madisonian democracy, and we're all going to be the West, and we're all

00:18:49.440 going to have iPhones and McDonald's, and we're all going to get along just fine. And it didn't really

00:18:53.100 work out. Didn't work out very well in Iraq. Didn't work out in Syria at all. Certainly didn't

00:18:58.700 work out in Libya. Obviously didn't work out in Afghanistan, where we were just routed last year

00:19:03.580 after 20 years mired in that backwater. It didn't totally work. Even here, Vladimir Putin,

00:19:11.720 who obviously wants to expand his empire, but he's using as the pretext for this, where he's saying

00:19:16.180 the problem is NATO's expansion, Western expansion. In the early 1990s, at the fall of the Soviet Union,

00:19:22.540 NATO said they weren't going to expand East. They did expand East. They expanded into former Warsaw

00:19:27.420 Pact, former Soviet nations. We're not going to allow that. Ukraine is right up on our border. 0.99

00:19:33.340 And you look at Ukraine. I suspect most people can't find Ukraine on a map. It's not your fault. Why

00:19:37.520 would people pay attention to the maps of Eastern Europe? I suspect Joe Biden can't find Ukraine on

00:19:42.380 a map because he doesn't know anything. That is his fault. He's the president. He should know where

00:19:45.420 it is. But I bet Hunter Biden can find Ukraine on a map because he had a no-show job at the corrupt

00:19:50.500 oligarchic energy industry in Ukraine. Adds even more complication to this issue. But Ukraine is right 1.00

00:19:58.580 there between Europe, the EU, and Russia. Ukraine is a buffer state. There's a really good piece on

00:20:08.760 this in Tablet Magazine by Lee Smith. Ukraine historically is a buffer state. And the thing

00:20:15.520 about buffer states is they've got to play nice with the big powers on either side. When buffer states play

00:20:21.580 nice with the big powers on either side, generally things are okay. But the minute that buffer states

00:20:27.400 start to turn to one side or the other, then you see tensions begin to rise. And what you saw in

00:20:34.060 Ukraine for the period before 2013-2014 is that Ukraine was tilting pro-Russia. So then the West,

00:20:45.220 through the encouragement of protests, through direct funding of protests and activist groups,

00:20:51.080 the West turned that government in Ukraine a little more pro-Western. Actually, a lot more pro-Western.

00:20:56.780 Actually, so pro-Western that they wanted to join NATO and they wanted to join the European Union.

00:21:02.060 All of a sudden, Russia says, we can't have this. Maybe we can tolerate NATO expanding to

00:21:09.000 Poland or Hungary or to some of those Eastern European states, but we can't tolerate them right 1.00

00:21:14.560 up on our border. So all of a sudden, even when you think you're going to solve a problem by having

00:21:20.020 Ukraine join NATO, what could be the downside of that? This is great. All of a sudden now,

00:21:23.700 you've gotten Russia into the sort of situation where they feel that it's in their essential

00:21:29.400 security interest to go in and you have war. This is something that very hawkish, very serious,

00:21:35.900 very well-respected foreign policy thinkers in the 1990s warned NATO about. They said,

00:21:40.260 do not expand NATO eastward. George Kennan, he's the author of the Long Telegram. He's the author of

00:21:45.100 the Strategy of Containment, the Cold War strategy for containing communist Russia. He said,

00:21:50.180 it's a huge mistake. It's a tragic mistake to expand NATO eastward. You are going to squander

00:21:56.380 the victory of the Cold War. You're going to create a new Cold War. That's what we're seeing happen

00:22:00.940 right now. This is what is so jarring here. All war is awful. All war involves a ton of suffering and

00:22:08.640 carnage and terrible actions. There's no question about it. But some wars are scarier than others. And I

00:22:14.280 think most people believe that this war, this war that's going on right now between former superpower

00:22:20.820 nuclear state Russia and sovereign nation Ukraine is different and scarier than say, I don't know,

00:22:28.560 the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict or the war between Saudi Arabia and Yemen, for instance, right? There's

00:22:35.320 something, why? Well, I said this yesterday and it got me into trouble. I said, this is the first

00:22:39.900 major war in my lifetime between civilized nations. And all the libs, they're still doing it. Thousands

00:22:47.660 and thousands of blue check responses. Michael, you racist, you idiot, you ignoramus. What do you, 1.00

00:22:55.520 how dare you say that this is the first major war between civilized nations in your lifetime?

00:23:00.460 What's the counterexample? I can't think of one. I didn't think I was making a particularly

00:23:06.720 provocative, conservative, right-wing statement. It's just a simple observation.

00:23:14.620 And actually, it's an observation that is so clear that it's not even right-wingers

00:23:19.940 making it. It's left-wingers as well. There's a journalist on CBS News. CBS News, not the most

00:23:28.380 rock-ribbed right-wing conservative outlet. Journalist on CBS News who made exactly the same 0.77

00:23:33.180 point I did, apparently, before I even made it. Now, you've got to make sure timing is a very

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00:24:47.760 Tonight is Joe Biden's first official State of the Union address. And the one thing I guarantee

00:24:53.080 you're not going to hear is the truth. You're not. That's because the Biden presidency is a total

00:24:58.420 disaster. Supply chain crisis, energy crisis, debacle in Afghanistan, all self-induced. Right now,

00:25:04.700 this war in Ukraine, much of it, frankly, probably all of it due to Joe Biden's feckless and embarrassing

00:25:10.460 leadership. Now, of course, Biden is never going to say that, but Ben Shapiro will tonight, exactly 15

00:25:17.060 minutes following Joe Biden's remarks before a joint session of Congress. Ben will offer up his

00:25:21.380 response. Call it the real State of the Union or call it a response to the State of the Union. Put

00:25:26.500 simply, Ben will destroy Joe Biden's State of the Union with facts and logic. Join me, Ben, Jeremy,

00:25:32.440 Matt, and Drew tonight at 815 Eastern, 715 Central on the Daily Wire YouTube channel. The real State of

00:25:38.260 the Union response with Ben will be airing as soon as Biden's address ends on the same channel.

00:25:43.700 Make sure you tune in. We'll be right back with a lot more.

00:25:59.280 I got in trouble on Twitter for making my comment about how this is the first major war between

00:26:03.640 civilized nations, not because what I said was false. Those tweets don't get you in trouble generally,

00:26:09.340 but because what I said was true. And you're just not allowed to say it because it offends

00:26:14.440 politically correct sensibilities. I knew this. I have always known this. And now I have been proven

00:26:21.020 right by a reporter on CBS News who made exactly the same point. This isn't a place with all due

00:26:27.300 respect, you know, like Iraq or Afghanistan that has seen conflict raging for decades. You know,

00:26:35.000 this is a relatively civilized, uh, relatively European, I have to choose those words carefully

00:26:40.540 to a city where you wouldn't expect that or hope that it's going to happen. But Iraq is the birthplace 1.00

00:26:47.140 of civilization. Uh, yeah. Uh, okay. Sure. That was a while ago, you know, uh, recently things haven't

00:26:54.600 been great. I don't think you honeymooned in Baghdad, white liberals trying to disprove this obvious point

00:27:02.780 that in a more honest age, everyone would be able to agree about. Everyone knows,

00:27:08.920 everyone knows that the point is right. Okay. We're, we're living in an age where it's,

00:27:17.000 it's not even that we need to persuade people to believe that, that the things we think are right

00:27:25.900 are right. We're living in an age where even when people know that certain things are true,

00:27:31.640 they just feel that they're not allowed to say it. I'll give you an example of this. Mike Anton,

00:27:36.980 uh, pointed this out to me, the political writer, uh, Mike Anton. Uh, we were discussing

00:27:43.300 the great replacement conspiracy theory. You might've heard about this. People go after

00:27:47.760 Tucker Carlson for saying the great replacement conspiracy theory. What is the great replacement

00:27:52.180 conspiracy theory? The great replacement conspiracy theory is the idea that Democrats are using mass

00:27:57.520 migration to change the demographics of America in a way that is more politically advantageous to them,

00:28:02.860 right? And this is a terrible conspiracy theory. And if you ever even suggest it, you're a terrible

00:28:07.100 racist and you're awful and you're evil, except that the Democrats have bragged about this openly 1.00

00:28:13.860 in print in the New York times. There's a piece by Michelle Goldberg on this very point. 0.99

00:28:18.260 There have been many reports in the network news on this very, very point for many years.

00:28:24.320 And so I posed this question to Mike Anton and he said, the issue here is not that the Democrats and

00:28:31.460 Republicans can't agree on what is happening on some particular political strategy. It's that

00:28:37.360 the Democrats do something. They tell us that they do something. And then they tell us that we're not

00:28:47.000 allowed to say that they told us that they did something. It's a degree of, of gaslighting and

00:28:54.700 living in lies and an enforced living in lies that is so infuriating and so maddening in the real sense.

00:29:01.760 It actually drives you insane. Everyone knows that men are not women, right? Everybody knows that a man 0.96

00:29:07.420 cannot become a woman. Everyone knows that the hulking dude on the Penn women's swim team is not a

00:29:12.560 woman. He's a dude and looks like a dude and just obviously is a dude. But we're not allowed to say

00:29:18.540 that. And we're not allowed to even suggest or imply that we believe that. So we all know something

00:29:25.640 to be true. We just all have to pretend. In a way, there's some comfort there. It means that the world

00:29:34.380 hasn't gone completely insane. We're just liars. We're just dishonest and cowardly. But we haven't gone 0.85

00:29:41.120 completely insane. We've been right about a lot of things. The masks, for example. I think there

00:29:45.240 are some people, some people who believe that the masks are really helpful in stopping the Wu flu,

00:29:52.300 right? There are some people who really cling to their masks in a, in a sincere way, but most people

00:29:57.220 don't. Most people, including all of the people pushing the masks, know that the masks are frivolous.

00:30:04.120 Dr. Fauci gets caught time and time again at the height of the pandemic, at the next height of the

00:30:09.400 pandemic, at the surge, at the stop the curve and the spread and this. He gets caught time and time

00:30:14.180 again, not wearing his mask. He's in the middle of the baseball stadium in the ballpark. He's

00:30:19.580 throwing out or dribbling the first pitch at the Nationals game. He's got his mask on. Then he goes

00:30:24.000 up to the stands when he's actually sitting next to people. Not when he's in the middle of an empty

00:30:29.280 ballpark, but when he's actually sitting next to people, not from his household. He's got the mask

00:30:32.480 down and he's talking and chatting because he doesn't really care. Mayor of San Francisco doesn't really

00:30:35.940 care. Nancy Pelosi doesn't really care. Joe Biden doesn't really care. He doesn't believe the mask

00:30:40.060 does anything at all. Leanna Wu, the medical analyst on CNN goes on. She says, it's just a

00:30:45.120 facial decoration. It doesn't really do anything. But publicly, when we know the cameras are on,

00:30:51.940 they've all got to wear it. And they don't believe it does anything. And we don't believe it does

00:30:56.320 anything. And they know that we don't believe it does anything. And we know that they don't believe

00:30:59.500 it does anything, but we've all got to pretend. That's what we've got to do. Except now there are

00:31:03.640 diminishing marginal returns. This is an election year. Democrats are going to have a really hard

00:31:07.760 time clinging to power. And so I've got great news. We've got such terrible news generally,

00:31:12.100 the horrible, the war going on, discord at home. But I've got, I've got really good news. COVID was

00:31:18.460 cured. COVID's over guys today. Officially, I think today COVID is totally over. How did it get cured?

00:31:28.220 By the State of the Union address. The House of Representatives has decided to drop the mask

00:31:34.260 requirement just in time for Joe Biden's State of the Union address tonight. The Capitol physicians

00:31:41.460 said just a day or two ago, physicians said in an update that masks are now optional at the Capitol,

00:31:47.620 including for this special day. You're seeing in cities around the country, states around the country,

00:31:53.760 the dropping of mask requirements, the dropping of vaccine requirements, all around the same time.

00:32:01.560 COVID hasn't really changed. You see, it goes up, it goes down. There are more cases. There are fewer

00:32:07.460 cases. Deaths have been very, very low for a long time. There's going to be another variant. Experts tell

00:32:14.580 us the next variant might be pretty bad too, but that's not what changed. What changed was the

00:32:19.620 political calculation. Democrats can't keep this up forever and they realize they're not getting

00:32:24.680 political returns. The symbol of the mask is no longer helping them. And so they get rid of it

00:32:29.580 because it was a symbol all the time. Why do they need this? They need this because

00:32:35.800 everything that Joe Biden has touched has turned to ash. That's why everything, the economy,

00:32:42.380 foreign policy, social relations, trust in government, everything has turned to absolute

00:32:51.020 dirt on his watch. And so he needs a slight, any kind of win. So what does he got? He's going to

00:32:58.940 nominate a Supreme Court justice that might help him. We'll get to that in a second. And he's going

00:33:05.840 to remove the masks and say, I beat COVID. How'd you beat COVID? Because I said I beat COVID. Okay.

00:33:10.060 All right. That's enough to do it. What they're desperately trying to do right now is to avoid

00:33:14.900 this war, getting dragged into this war. That would just be the cherry on top of this

00:33:21.680 rotten Sunday of the Biden administration is if he somehow got us pulled into a war with a nuclear

00:33:28.860 former superpower. And so they're trying everything they can to avoid it. Jen Psaki was just asked

00:33:33.040 about the suggestion that has come from ignorant liberals and Adam Kinzinger. But I repeat myself, 0.96

00:33:39.740 the suggestion is for a no fly zone over Ukraine and a no fly zone. It sounds really great. What 1.00

00:33:46.900 is a no fly zone means? You know, you tell all the warships, all the airplanes to, to stand down.

00:33:53.140 Oh, good. Okay. Well, that sounds good because right now the airplanes are shooting people

00:33:56.840 and dropping bombs. And so if we, if we tell them to not fly anymore, then there'll be less death,

00:34:02.740 right? Great. Okay. No, let's get support of no fly zone. But what a no fly zone actually means is

00:34:08.720 that the people imposing the no fly zone, in this case, the United States are willing to shoot down

00:34:16.540 enemy fighters. In other words, that they are going to declare war on, in this case,

00:34:23.460 not some goat herders in Afghanistan, but a nuclear former superpower. So this would be 0.63

00:34:31.380 not a great idea. Fortunately, cooler heads are prevailing even at the White House. Jen Psaki

00:34:37.400 pooh-poohing the idea when it was brought to her attention.

00:34:40.220 On military, is there any way in which the U.S. would support a no fly zone over Ukraine?

00:34:45.160 Well, here's what's important for everybody to know about a no fly zone. What that would require

00:34:48.740 is implementation by the U.S. military. It would essentially mean the U.S. military

00:34:53.340 would be shooting down planes, Russian planes. That is definitely escalatory. That would potentially

00:34:59.180 put us into a place where we're in a military conflict with Russia. That is not something the

00:35:03.920 president wants to do. So that's a no on that. Those are all the reasons why that's not a good

00:35:08.300 idea. Okay. So she doesn't notice, she doesn't definitively say we're not going to do it. We're

00:35:13.820 not going to have a no fly zone. But she says, you know, this would probably not be the best. Here's

00:35:18.340 what a no fly zone is. Because she's got to mollify the people on her side, the gung-ho, 0.96

00:35:23.320 warmongering liberals who believe all the propaganda coming out of Ukraine and think that this war is

00:35:28.340 going to be a cinch. We'll go in, they'll all greet us as liberators, Putin will turn tail.

00:35:32.760 And that's that. Not a single American will be hurt. No casualties on our side. Democracy saved.

00:35:37.960 You know that flourishing Ukrainian democracy that even though we were complaining about it as a

00:35:43.040 corrupt oligarchy like five minutes ago, that that'll be saved. This is the fight for the free

00:35:46.920 world, right? All of this propaganda, which is essential in wars, but is not actually explaining

00:35:53.260 the facts on the ground. The White House has to say, hey, I know we've been pumping this out to you,

00:35:56.900 but don't believe it so much that we're actually going to get into a shooting war with Russia.

00:36:02.020 The Pentagon was less interested in beating around the bush. They were asked the same question. They

00:36:06.740 had a simpler answer. Now that we've seen civilian targets that have been hit, is the U.S. considering

00:36:12.400 installing a no fly zone in Ukrainian airspace? No, no. Simple enough. No, we're not going to do it.

00:36:20.160 Sorry. No. So then the question becomes, because look, I don't want to sound callous about this.

00:36:26.220 I don't want to sound, I don't want to sound like Joe Biden and seem like I'm holding out the red

00:36:30.720 carpet for Putin to invade this country and, and take it over and try to rebuild the Soviet Union.

00:36:36.340 None of us like seeing what's going on. This is horrible. The stuff that's going on in Ukraine is, 0.99

00:36:40.420 is horrifying. You're seeing a, generally speaking, civilized place being reduced to rubble,

00:36:49.060 horrible atrocities, potential war crimes being committed against civilians.

00:36:52.360 So is there nothing we can do? I mean, that's the question we keep beating our heads about. Is

00:36:58.140 there, is there nothing that can be done here? Is there, is there nothing that Putin could do

00:37:02.820 that would draw us in to the war? Jen Psaki is asked a genuinely tricky question. Is there a red line?

00:37:12.080 There are reports of illegal cluster bombs and vacuum bombs being used by the Russians.

00:37:16.700 If that's true, what is the next step of this administration? And is there a red line for how

00:37:22.980 much violence will be tolerated against civilians in this manner that's illegal and potentially a war

00:37:31.400 crime? It is, it would be. I don't have any confirmation of that. We have seen the reports.

00:37:35.840 If, if that were true, it would potentially be a war crime. Obviously there are a range of

00:37:41.040 international fora that would assess that. Um, so certainly we would look to that, to be a part of

00:37:46.180 that conversation. This was the most adept answer I've ever heard Jen Psaki give because she's asked 0.98

00:37:52.200 two questions and she conflates them. Says, would there be a red line? And would that be a war crime?

00:37:58.260 If, if Putin were using cluster bombs against civilians, for instance, which almost certainly he

00:38:02.160 already is. And Psaki says it would be, notice it would be not that would be a red line. It would

00:38:11.220 be a war crime against civilians. And therefore there are lots of international fora to take this

00:38:17.840 too, but she's not going to fall into the same trap that Obama fell into in Syria. Remember Obama

00:38:23.240 was asked if Bashar Assad uses chemical weapons, would that be a red line for you in Syria? And he said,

00:38:30.340 well, that would be, that'd be a red line. That would be a red line. And then Assad does it. He 0.74

00:38:36.440 calls Obama's bluff and there was no red line. So Psaki doesn't want to draw it. This is actually good

00:38:41.640 news because what we're looking at right now is not just a simple go in, beat the Ruskies.

00:38:53.580 That's that. Zelensky, he looks like such a cool guy. Let's save Zelensky because we like him

00:38:59.160 because now he's a star in the Western media and good stuff. Pack it up two weeks. We're all back

00:39:04.560 home having a party. World wars have, have started for less than we're looking at right now.

00:39:13.600 A random archduke was killed in Serbia and that launched one of the bloodiest, most heinous wars

00:39:23.480 in the history of the world. World wars have started for less than this. We have had relative

00:39:33.020 global peace and order under a single hegemonic American empire for about 30 years now.

00:39:42.080 And there have been cracks in that for 20 years now. And there have been other rising powers. Russia

00:39:47.460 has gotten back on its feet to some degree. China has really, really risen up and now owns a lot of

00:39:53.780 the United States, by the way, not just the politicians like the Biden family, but also a

00:39:58.420 lot of our resources. They own a lot of our debt. They manufacture a lot of our things. We're in a

00:40:01.820 much different world than we were in, in the early 1990s. World peace such as we've had for 30 years

00:40:07.960 is not the norm. Okay. Wars happened. There will be no end to war. There will be no end to history.

00:40:13.940 There will be no end to war. We are in a precarious situation. People need to be cautious and exercise

00:40:20.360 good judgment and be prudent. Some people believe we're already in another world war. Fiona Hill,

00:40:28.180 who is an expert on Russia. She served in a zillion administrations. I think she served in the Bush

00:40:34.000 two administration, the Obama administration and the Trump administration. Definitely a swamp

00:40:39.740 creature type. She's just a DC kind of think tanky policy wonky expert. She, she became very anti-Trump

00:40:47.900 even after working for Trump. But she believes that Putin would use nuclear weapons. She believes

00:40:53.240 that we are already in a third world war. She says that world wars have come, very often come out of

00:41:00.560 previous conflicts. So the second world war was in many ways, just a continuation of the first world

00:41:05.620 war with a little period of peace in the middle. And that's not merely with the hindsight of 2020.

00:41:11.840 There were a lot of astute commentators who recognized this at the time. A lot of political

00:41:16.360 cartoons after the first world war said, you know, 20 years from now, they'd have a little,

00:41:21.000 little cartoon of a baby. I for, there's a very specific political cartoon I'm referring to.

00:41:25.480 I forget exactly. I'll try to dig it up. It was a little cartoon of a baby and it was

00:41:29.060 given the peace that ended world war one. They said, all right, this baby is going to be fighting in 20

00:41:33.520 years. There's no way to avoid the war. Very famous painting of Churchill after world war one,

00:41:38.600 all the leaders from world war one. And there's Churchill looking, looking at the viewer as if to

00:41:44.800 say we're headed for war again. There's no, and then world war grows out of that. Some people view

00:41:49.080 the cold war as a continuation of those world wars. Some people view, Fiona Hill believes that the wars

00:41:55.600 of empire that we've been seeing in Afghanistan, in Syria are in many ways, a continuation of that and

00:42:01.220 things could get hotter again. So then the question we started with, we started with a very simple

00:42:06.920 question today. We're talking about lynchings. We're talking about abortion. We're talking about

00:42:12.440 nuclear Holocaust. And the question was, are we all going to die? And the answer of course, 0.87

00:42:19.900 is yes. Yes, it is. Yes, of course we're going to die. Today is Mardi Gras. Mardi Gras, Fat

00:42:31.320 Tuesday. The significance of Mardi Gras is not merely that I was pestering my wife to lift her

00:42:38.220 shirt up at the breakfast table. She did not find that very amusing. I didn't even have beads to give

00:42:41.920 her. The significance of Mardi Gras on Fat Tuesday is that we're headed for Ash Wednesday. Ash Wednesday 0.65

00:42:47.380 is the traditional Christian observation that we're all going to die. You go on Ash Wednesday, 0.97

00:42:54.640 Catholics still, they go to mass, they get ashes put on their forehead. The ash is burnt from Palm 1.00

00:42:59.240 Sunday. And the priest says, remember man that you are dust and unto dust you shall return. It's the

00:43:03.800 memento mori, the recognition that we're all going to die. And the weird thing about Ash Wednesday

00:43:08.580 is that I think it might be the most popular Catholic holiday of the year. It's hard to call it a

00:43:15.660 holiday, but it's probably the most popular Catholic liturgical day of the year. People

00:43:22.640 who don't go to mass, who don't go to confession or access the sacraments, people who don't even go

00:43:28.000 to mass on Christmas and Easter will often show up on Ash Wednesday. Why? Well, in part, because it's

00:43:35.420 very ritualistic and tribalistic, right? You actually get the marker on your head. You remember it's very

00:43:40.560 tangible. We're physical beings in part and we can remember that. But also it's because people

00:43:45.480 need to be reminded that we're going to die. There's a Twitter account, which is the death

00:43:50.060 reminder Twitter account. It just tweets out every day, you're going to die. We need to remember that.

00:43:55.120 Philosophy has been described as making sense of death, getting ready to die.

00:44:00.440 Life is a practice for dying. Not to sound too morbid about it, but it actually, that's a very

00:44:08.420 important thing. We need to remember, it puts our whole life in order. There's a famous line that I

00:44:14.500 love to quote from Dr. Johnson when I defend the death penalty, which is, depend upon it, sir. When a

00:44:19.420 man knows he's to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates the mind wonderfully. We in the secular,

00:44:25.860 liberal, decadent West have lost sight of deeper things in life. We think we're just going to live

00:44:34.620 forever. A lot of idiots, very high IQ billionaire idiots in Silicon Valley and a lot of futurist 1.00

00:44:40.960 types, they think we're going to live forever. We're going to plug in our brain stems, we're 1.00

00:44:44.760 going to upload our minds to the clouds, and then we're just going to live forever on this earth,

00:44:48.040 which sounds kind of hellish to me. They've certainly lost the thought of eternal life,

00:44:52.600 true eternal life through, you know, religion and stuff like that, that we, that animated our

00:44:57.100 whole civilization before it collapsed. But they think this world, you know what this world's about?

00:45:02.840 It's about doing what you want. This world, it's about getting pleasure. That's what you want. You

00:45:07.080 know, if it feels good, do it, man. Life's too short. Carpe diem, seize the day. Chesterton pointed

00:45:12.040 out the carpe diem religion, the seize the day religion is not the religion of happy people. It's the

00:45:16.940 religion of very unhappy people, desperate people who just want a little more titillation, 0.99

00:45:20.840 just a little more sensation before the lights finally go out and we turn to warm food and take

00:45:25.300 a dirt nap. Not very uplifting, not a good way to live. But if you recognize you are going to die,

00:45:32.280 there are deeper things in this life. I hope that we're not all blitzed out in a, in a, the bright

00:45:38.160 white flash of, of Putin's last stand. I hope we're not wiped out. And I don't think we're going to

00:45:44.880 be wiped out in that. But even if we were, if we died tomorrow, next week, or in 70 years,

00:45:51.340 by the grand scheme of, of time, it's not all that different. It's going to happen sooner or later.

00:45:58.680 So what are we doing now? What are we really living for? We live in a time where, where health,

00:46:06.280 public health has become so good. Sanitation, medicine has become so good that we don't see death

00:46:13.280 a lot. We, we really, we, we don't see people die. When, when people are about to die, we sort of send

00:46:18.840 them off to, you know, little hospices and things. So we don't need to look at it. We don't hold

00:46:24.400 particularly elaborate funerals or wakes anymore. We've got all this sort of medicine. So we don't

00:46:29.000 have to think about it. Very important to think about that sort of stuff, folks. Very, otherwise

00:46:35.020 you're going to lose sight of what really, what really matters in this life. The state of the,

00:46:40.740 what is the state of our union? You're going to hear it tonight from Joe Biden. The state of our

00:46:44.740 union is we're all going to die. Maybe, maybe that could actually teach us something. We're heading

00:46:51.340 into a period that is penitential, a period where you're supposed to sacrifice. Certainly Christians 1.00

00:46:58.160 are, but I would encourage everybody, even if you don't consider yourself a Christian to do that as

00:47:01.940 well. Give something up, detach yourself from the things of this world, put down the Twitter,

00:47:06.120 this would be very hard for me to put down all the constant stimulation and think about the deeper

00:47:12.160 things. There was a question some years ago, why do perfectly happy Londoners go off and join ISIS?

00:47:19.000 Why are people, why do people, are they attracted to these sorts of things? Because men do not merely

00:47:24.580 want to sit around and scroll and eat food and look at porn and just turn into couch potatoes until we

00:47:31.160 die of lethargy. No, we, mankind needs struggle. We want meaning. We want virtue. Victor Frankl said, 0.79

00:47:37.900 man's search for meaning is his deepest longing in life. We want a sense of transcendence. That's

00:47:43.440 where wokeness comes from. That's where virtue signaling comes from. We want to push up against

00:47:48.580 something. We want to struggle. That, what do they say? Soft times make, soft times make bad men,

00:47:56.780 bad men make hard times, hard men make good men, good men make soft times. You ever hear that

00:48:01.560 expression? These cycles. We've been living in a really soft, fatty period. Now we're heading into

00:48:07.020 a period that is much more one of struggle, much more one of war, one that is going to be a little

00:48:12.160 bit harder. Prepare yourself for that and remember there's something beyond the struggles and pleasures

00:48:17.100 of this world. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show. See you tomorrow.

00:48:25.880 If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe. And if you want to help spread the

00:48:30.720 word, please give us a five-star review and tell your friends to subscribe. We're available on Apple

00:48:36.220 Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Also, be sure to check out the other

00:48:41.780 Daily Wire podcasts, including The Ben Shapiro Show, The Andrew Klavan Show, and The Matt Walsh Show.

00:48:46.840 The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Ben Davies, executive producer Jeremy Boring. Our

00:48:51.920 technical director is Austin Stevens, supervising producer Mathis Glover, production manager Pavel

00:48:57.660 Vidovsky, editor and associate producer Danny D'Amico, associate producer Justine Turley, audio mixer

00:49:04.300 Mike Coromina, and hair and makeup by Cherokee Heart. The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire

00:49:09.320 production. Copyright Daily Wire 2022. Today on The Ben Shapiro Show, Joe Biden prepares for his first

00:49:15.320 official State of the Union address as president as chaos surrounds him on all sides. That's today

00:49:20.400 on The Ben Shapiro Show. Give it a listen.

The Michael Knowles Show - March 01, 2022

Ep. 953 - Democrats： Don't Let Nuclear War Distract From Old Hate Crimes

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